NMCI to generate business opportunities

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As the Navy Marine Corps Intranet project progresses, more doors will open for technology companies to sign on as product or service providers. But the landscape facing vendors is still largely uncharted, said Rear Adm. Charles Munns, NMCI's director, at a press briefing May 14.

The Navy will host a symposium in New Orleans next month where government and private-sector representatives will discuss possible ways they can work together in the future.

The intranet project represents a major change in information technology thinking, Munns said. No longer will individual units buy technology on a local basis, concerned only with whether it will solve their isolated problems. Designated military and civilian officials will make decisions on a corporate level, seeking solutions that can be deployed throughout the Navy Department. "That's a significant shift for the Navy," Munns said. "We need to help industry learn to deal with us as we make that change."

As the intranet infrastructure is rolled out, the next steps will be to upgrade and modernize about 30,000 old applications, ultimately consolidating them into about 2,000 new ones, Munns said. Then, the Navy's databases will take center stage.

The work in modernizing applications and databases "is the huge opportunity here," he said.

The Navy will continue its efforts to bring small businesses into the project, in part because of mandates and partly because small businesses are innovative, Munns said. "We'll have to open avenues for them," he said. We're not sure what those roads will exactly look like."